Even as in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue in­to the cheat­ing scan­dal which oc­curred dur­ing last Wednes­day’s CSEC Math ex­am at the Tran­quil­li­ty Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School, a par­al­lel in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been launched in­to the ab­sence of a key se­nior of­fi­cial who ought to have been present at the in­sti­tu­tion on the day.

An in­te­grat­ed Air Unit is ex­pect­ed to be in­tro­duced in the coun­try’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus soon.

Like oth­er places in Venezuela, the econ­o­my of her small town in the Orinoco Delta had col­lapsed, caus­ing thou­sands of res­i­dents to flee.

Ques­tions are be­ing raised about the mil­lions spent on the Jus­tice Pro­tec­tion Pro­gramme and whether it re­al­ly works to pro­tect whistle­blow­ers and wit­ness­es.

Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, the com­pa­ny that ac­quired the ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion as­sets of the failed Petrotrin, has made an af­ter-tax prof­it for the first four months of its op­er­a­tions of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $565 mil­lion.

Trinidad and To­ba­go has not been in a re­ces­sion for the last year and in­stead the econ­o­my has set­tled at a low­er lev­el, ac­cord­ing to the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Bourse Se­cu­ri­ties, Sub­has Ramkhelawan.

To­ba­go’s econ­o­my has been grow­ing at an an­nu­al rate of three per cent over the last five years, ac­cord­ing to the Fi­nance Sec­re­tary in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Joel Jack.

Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Kelvin Charles has said the con­tin­ued em­ploy­ment by the THA of 60 per cent of the work­ers in To­ba­go is not sus­tain­able.

Cae­sar Coun­try su­perbly rid­den by ap­pren­tice Ki­mal San­to gave cham­pi­on train­er Glenn Mendez a shock, when he up­staged his high­ly re­put­ed sta­ble­mate and the 2018 Stew­ards Cup win­ner Whis­per Light and Princess Suri to win yes­ter­day's fea­ture Hand­i­cap for Hors­es Rat­ed 70 and Over go­ing over a dis­tance of 1,350 me­tres.

T&T ath­letes Kyle Greaux and Michelle-Lee Ahye fin­ished down the field at the Di­a­mond League in Shang­hai, Chi­na on Sat­ur­day.

Chief Sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles ex­press­es sin­cere con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly and friends of Sea to Sea Marathon­er Andy Phillip, 48, who passed away on Sat­ur­day morn­ing at Calder Hall, To­ba­go.

Lead scor­er, Ty War­wick guid­ed Holy Name Con­vent (HNC) to their sec­ond vic­to­ry de­feat­ing East Mu­cu­rapo Sec­ondary School (EMSS) 19-11 as ac­tion con­tin­ued yes­ter­day in the Un­der-15 di­vi­sion of the T&T Sec­ondary Schools’ Bas­ket­ball As­so­ci­a­tion North Zone League at the Nel­son Man­dela Park, St Clair, Port-of-Spain.

Not high­ly knowl­edge­able on the genre, I was a bit hes­i­tant when called up­on to go to Saint Lu­cia to cov­er its an­nu­al Saint Lu­cia Jazz Fes­ti­val. How would I do it jus­tice, I thought? Af­ter all, I had on­ly be­come fa­mil­iar with the brand and ap­pre­ci­at­ed its smooth and sooth­ing de­liv­ery af­ter my Bar­ba­di­an grand­moth­er would fill the house on an ear­ly Sat­ur­day morn­ing with the voic­es of El­la Fitzger­ald, Bil­lie Hol­i­day, Charles Min­gus, and Her­bie Han­cock, while she mopped the floors. But to speak of it pro­fi­cient­ly, I was not qual­i­fied.

High on the hills of the South­ern Range over­look­ing the shores where Venezue­lans are of­ten smug­gled in, lies a vol­cano that looks unique when pho­tographed from above. It is the Anglais Point vol­cano which emits a steady mul­ti-coloured flow of mud slur­ries that reach­es 700 feet down to the Pa­lo Seco Beach.

Dhalpuri (spelling may vary) is the messy, nut­ty, spicy roti that is no­to­ri­ous­ly known for be­ing labour-in­ten­sive. It’s not that dif­fi­cult to make though and the re­ward is out of this world. Dhal is boiled with cur­ry and saf­fron, so it’s in­tense­ly aro­mat­ic from the start. It’s then sea­soned with geera and parched to de­vel­op a roast­ed flavour and tex­ture that can­not be mim­ic­ked.

From gum­my, sap­py rice to un­der­cooked, dry rice—we’ve all had our is­sues with cook­ing rice. Ad­mit­ted­ly, it can be tricky. The type of grain, pot and method can af­fect whether you get fluffy, per­fect­ly cooked rice or a dis­as­trous mess. Many lit­tle things con­tribute to poor­ly cooked rice. Here are a few com­mon mis­takes that you may be mak­ing and should avoid.

Venezuela has the high­est proven oil re­serves in the world—some 300 bil­lion bar­rels, greater even than Sau­di Ara­bia. Notwith­stand­ing its wealth, Venezuela has os­cil­lat­ed be­tween pe­ri­ods of boom and ad­just­ment and coups which track pe­ri­ods of aus­ter­i­ty. To­day, how­ev­er, Venezue­lans are suf­fer­ing the im­pact of a man-made eco­nom­ic and hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis. The econ­o­my shrunk by half be­tween 2014 and 2018. The IMF pre­dicts that in­fla­tion will hit 1.37 mil­lion per cent in 2019 and that re­al GDP will de­crease by 18 per cent. Oil pro­duc­tion, the lifeblood of the econ­o­my, has de­clined from 3.3 mil­lion bar­rels per day two decades ago to an es­ti­mat­ed 800,000 to­day.

The term "mon­ey laun­der­ing" was pro­nounced on the glob­al psy­che im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing New York’s 9/11 at­tacks. Since Amer­i­ca claimed this ne­far­i­ous­ly well-ex­e­cut­ed at­tack was per­pe­trat­ed by 19 Arab ter­ror­ists fi­nanced through $400,000 of sim­ple mon­ey trans­fers, it in­tro­duced and ex­e­cut­ed heavy-hand­ed dic­ta­to­r­i­al poli­cies com­pelling the en­tire world to com­ply with its new dic­tates, un­mind­ful if not un­car­ing of the desta­bil­is­ing im­pli­ca­tions slow­ing the eco­nom­ic progress of small and de­vel­op­ing Caribbean coun­tries all of whom nev­er har­boured a mod­icum of ill-will on this uni­lat­er­al­ly nar­cis­sis­tic be­he­moth, nor have any of them ex­pe­ri­enced home­grown ter­ror­ism.

As ir­re­sistible as the temp­ta­tion to sub­ject the Prime Min­is­ter's full-page ad on Sun­day to Com­mon En­trance stan­dards (as it has), there is some­thing in the mes­sage to which much more at­ten­tion needs to be paid.